Magnitsky Bill takes on a life of its own

Aug 08 2012

Kommersant

Yelena Chernenko

Kirill Belyaninov

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Republican-Florida), head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House of Representatives announced that she did not believe it was necessary to repeal the amendment. According to her, Moscow did not currently deserve "such

Sources in Congress now indicate that it could be adopted without repealing the Jackson-Vanik amendment.

U.S. Congress
postpones the repeal of Jackson-Vanik amendment and it will not be passed in
tandem with the "Magnitsky Bill". Sources in Congress
are not discounting the possibility that lawmakers in the autumn might only
approve the "Magnitsky Bill", (which is not causing any disputes
among lawmakers), and postpone the repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment for an
unspecified time. This
threatens to kill off the "reset" - Barack Obama's main Russian
foreign policy achievement.

Related:

U.S.-Russian relations have entered into a new
period of uncertainty. Since
the beginning of July, sources in the U.S. State Department and the Russian
Ministry of Foreign Affairs have been saying with some confidence that
everything will be resolved in August. They
anticipated that at the beginning of the month, the U.S. Congress would replace
the Jackson-Vanik amendment with the
"Magnitsky Bill ahead of Russia’s
accession to the WTO. However,
Congress has failed to meet the necessary deadline.

U.S. lawmakers went on recess Aug. 6 for
five weeks. Only eight days have been schedules for legislative business in
September, and after that comes the break for campaigning ahead of November
elections in the United
States. This sets back debate on
Jackson-Vanik by a minimum of three months, and realistically the issue will
only be taken up in six months, after the new Congress comes into session.

However, this issue has been
discussed at length. The current problem for bilateral relations is new rumors
that U.S.
lawmakers might approve the Magnitsky Bill without repealing Jackson-Vanik. Last week Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
(Republican-Florida), head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House of
Representatives announced that she did not believe it was necessary to repeal
the amendment. According
to her, Moscow
did not currently deserve "such a present" and the Russian position
on the Syrian question had forced discussions to center on the need to adopt
the Magnitsky Bill and postpone the trade law until next year. Ros-Lehtinen's
announcement was supported by a large number of influential members of
Congress.

This
state of affairs has put the White House in a tricky position. On the one hand, the administration
was hoping for a swift repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was planning to
officially announce the end of the trading restrictions at the Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation Summit in Vladivostok
at the beginning of September. And on the other hand, the Obama
administration has been trying to avoid adopting the Magnitsky Bill, wary of
causing any sharp deterioration of relations with Moscow. When
Congress decided to link the two issues, the White House saw this as an
unavoidable compromise and stopped forcing through the repeal of the amendment. "For the last few weeks no one
in the administration has even called us regarding Jackson-Vanik," said a
source in Congress.

At first glance the postponement of
the repeal and the adoption of the Magnitsky Bill by Congress would appear to
be in the White House's interests. "It's evident that in an election
year, the administration is more likely to agree to American businessmen
suffering some losses, but it does not want to enter into another diplomatic
skirmish with Russia,"
said political analyst Richard Darcy.

However, the refusal to quickly force through
the repeal of the amendment threatens to backfire on the White House. There
are no particular disagreements regarding the Magnitsky Bill in Congress and it
could become law in September. But without any tie-in to the lifting of the
trade restrictions, this
will cause a violent reaction in Russia. The Russian government and Foreign Ministry
have repeatedly declared that they consider it unacceptable to substitute the
Jackson-Vanik amendment with the Magnitsky Bill, and the adoption of the Magnitsky Bill
without the repeal of the amendment will be seen as nothing short of an insult
in Moscow. And that could be the final straw
for the reset.